Casinos make for great movie settings, and it seems that Hollywood has fallen in love with this idea over the years with casinos – legal and illegal – featuring heavily in some classic movies and some big blockbusters. Here are some of the best (subjectively speaking, of course) casinos movies ever made. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s time to take a look and see if you agree with the list.
Maverick
If you love to visit casinos either in real life or you enjoy playing online slots at Jackpotcitycasino.com, then you’ll understand the draw of a good casino movie. The excitement of the setting along with the action that comes with it always makes for good entertainment. Maverick, a 1994 movie starring Mel Gibson, James Garner and Jodie Foster, is an interesting movie because rather than the standard casino setting, a lot of the action takes place on a paddle steamer. This is because the film is set in America’s Old West.
The premise of the movie is that Maverick (Mel Gibson’s character) has to win a poker tournament to prove he is the best player. It costs $25,000 to enter, and most of the movie is about how he gets that money together in various comedic ways.
Ocean’s Eleven
For this list, we’re talking about the 2001 version of Ocean’s Eleven rather than the original 1960 version that featured the Rat Pack. In the remake, the stars were George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts. This is a heist movie, and the setting, as you might have guessed, is a casino.
Unlike many other heist movies in the same vein, Ocean’s Eleven is easy to follow and fun to watch, and there are sequels too; so if you liked the first one, you’ll have plenty more to watch afterwards.
Rounders
Rounders is another casino film with Matt Damon in a starring role, but this time the movie revolves around professional poker players. Although the film isn’t considered great by any standards, it did come out at exactly the right time – online poker was growing in popularity, and it meant that more people were able to follow the narrative of the movie, and more people had an interest in it. This, combined with the talented cast of Matt Damon, Edward Norton and John Malkovich, meant that it did well in cinemas and gained a strong following.
Casino
It just wouldn’t be possible to have a list of casino movies without mentioning Martin Scorsese’s 1995 movie Casino. This was an exciting movie that combined casinos with the mob, and since it starred Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone and the wonderful Robert De Niro, it just couldn’t go wrong.
The great part about Casino is that Las Vegas is just as much a character as the people are, and you can chart its growth from a crime city to one of fun and tourism. It’s a violent movie – as you might expect when it comes to gangsters and Scorsese – but there is a human story element to it that makes it more than just a lot of guns and gambling.